Alex Murdaugh broke down on the stand Thursday as he recounted seeing his slain wife and son with their brains splatted over the horrific scene, but denied being the killer despite sensationally admitting to lying about the night of the murders.
The disgraced South Carolina legal scion — who battled a pill addiction — is accused of fatally shooting wife Maggie, 52, and son Paul, 22, near the kennels at one of their homes on June 7, 2021.
Murdaugh sobbed and struggled to speak as he described discovering their bodies.
“So bad,” he said of the bloodbath that followed his son getting “the most vile threats” over a deadly, drunken boat crash in 2019.
“It was bad — it was terrible,” he said, saying he saw his son’s “brain laying on the sidewalk.”
Murdaugh, who smiled when first called to the stand, started his evidence by swearing that he was not responsible for their murders.
“I didn’t shoot my wife or my son any time. Ever,” he said after one of his attorneys held up guns and asked if he’d “blown [his] son’s brains out.”
But he soon shocked the courtroom when he admitted lying to cops that he’d not been at the kennels the night of the murders — confirming he was the voice his son caught in a Snapchat video that investigators say was filmed just five minutes before the bloodbath.
“I did lie to them,” he admitted three times of his statements to cops at the scene and ever since then.
He blamed his “addiction” to pills making him “paranoid.”
“It could be anything that triggered it — it might be a look somebody gave me, it might be a reaction somebody had to something I did, it might be a policeman following me in a car,” he told the Colleton County court.
After finding Maggie and Paul, Murdaugh, 54, said his legal partners were “repeatedly telling me” not to talk to anybody without a lawyer.
The police grilling “coupled with my distrust” for state cops “caused me to have paranoid thoughts,” he said.
“On June the 7th, I wasn’t thinking clearly,” he said, fighting back tears.
“I don’t think I was capable of reason. And I lied about being down there,” he said, saying his lies escalated in a “tangled web.”
“And I’m so sorry that I did,” he said, singling out surviving son Buster, 26, who testified two days earlier in his defense and watched in court as his dad confessed to lying to everyone.
“I’m sorry to both of our families. And most of all I’m sorry to Mags and Paul-Paul,” he continued, tearfully.
“I would never do anything intentionally to hurt either one of them. Ever. Ever.”
The Snapchat video that caught his voice was recorded at 8:45 p.m. — just five minutes before police believe Maggie and Paul were gunned down, according to a detailed timeline entered in evidence.
Murdaugh mentioned nothing unusual at the kennels beyond the “chaos” of the freed dogs chasing chickens.
“And then I left,” he said, saying he went “straight back” to the house and likely “dozed off for a minute” on the couch.
He then drove to visit his mom, who was a “shell of her old self” due to Alzheimer’s and was “agitated” that night, he said.
Prosecutors suggested that he parked by outbuildings near woodland away from the house to get rid of evidence. However, Murdaugh maintained it was “where I always park” when there.
However, Murdaugh maintained it was “where I always park” — giving a firm “no” if he disposed of bloody clothes or murder weapons.
Once back at the home, he said he was not concerned, but went to the kennels after failing to get a response from either on the phone.
He shook his head and twitched his mouth for several seconds when asked about the horror scene he found, sobbing so hard his glasses fell down his face.
He said he was “trying to tend to them” while on the phone to 911 — during which he told the dispatcher that he “should have known.”
“I was referring to Paw-Paw got so many threats that I didn’t take serious,” he said, referring to anger over a 2019 boat crash that killed 19-year-old Mallory Beach and using what he said was Paul’s nickname.
“Paul got the most vile threats … you couldn’t believe it. It was so over-the-top, truthfully, we didn’t think anything about it,” he said.
As he awaited cops, he went to the house to grab a gun — defying the dispatcher’s orders — because he “didn’t know if somebody was still out there,” he said.
He denied Googling a family-favorite restaurant at the scene — saying any earlier search must have been registered as he used his phone. “I wasn’t doing any Google searches,” he said.
He said he told state cops “they could do anything, anywhere, anytime” that would help find the killer or killers — even as he knew from the off that he would be a prime suspect having found the bodies.
Murdaugh described his son as “an absolute delight.”
“You could not be around Paw-Paw and not have a good time,” he said, breaking down again. “I loved doing anything with Paw-Paw.”
He said that Paul had ADD and ADHD and “might not have quite found his place yet,” at the time he was killed.
But said there was also a sweet side to his son, who would tell his friends “‘be present, appreciate where you are, the things you have, and the people around you,'” Murdaugh testified.
“I think a lot of that came from it hurt Paul so bad when Mallory died — but how many 22-year-olds do you know that think that way?”
He said he fell in love with his wife Maggie the first time they went out together.
“Yall saw the pictures. She was just as beautiful inside as she was outside, and I mean she was so adventurous,” he said.
Murdaugh said his wife wanted a big family but had pregnancy troubles. He said their decision to just have two boys “just made her love those boys so much more,” as he wiped away tears.
After a short recess, the trial resumed again with prosecutor Creighton Waters beginning a cross-examination of the accused murderer. Waters grilled Murdaugh about his financial crimes, which he openly admitted to, but the disgraced scion grew frustrated as Waters demanded specific information from cases he handled over a decade ago.
“You have charged me with murdering my wife and my son, and I have sat here for these weeks listening to this financial stuff that I did wrong, that I’m embarrassed by. I’m happy to talk with you about that as much as you would like to talk about. I’m required to talk about it as much as you want to talk about it. But the fact is I cannot specifically remember sitting down for the details you’re asking for.
“But what I can tell you is that in all of these financial situations, I stole money that was not my money, I misled people I shouldn’t have misled, and I did wrong. I can tell you that.”
Murdaugh said that opioid addiction was “a cause” of financial troubles but not the only one. He struggled to pay bills in 2006 and had some land deals go back during the recession.
Waters alleged that even after he recovered financially and was making over $1 million a year, Mudaugh continued to steal money to support his wealthy lifestyle.
The prosecutor painted Murdaugh and his family as eminent in the community with close ties to local law enforcement. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather all served as solicitors in the district for nearly a century from 1920 to 2006 until Murdaugh broke the chain and entered private practice.
“I think my family was very well thought of, I think my family was respected, I think my family helped a lot of people,” he said. He was elected president of Trial Lawyers association around 2014.
Murdaugh additionally served as volunteer assistant solicitor under his father and received a law enforcement badge that he kept in his car and visible in case he got pulled over, “because I found that law enforcement often times is friendlier when you’re in law enforcement,” he explained.
While he said he “personally didn’t consider myself to be law enforcement, no sir,” he had blue law enforcement lights installed on his private vehicle with the blessings of local sheriffs.
The prosecution revealed a photo of Murdaugh with the badge hanging out of his pocket when he visited the hospital the night Paul crashed the boat, killing 19-year-old Mallory Beach.
He said he did not generally wear that badge that way, but said he “may have” wanted some kind of advantage by wearing it, without elaborating. He couldn’t say whether he had it visible
on purpose or by accident: “That is not how I would normally carry a badge.”
He denied using the badge to get into hospital areas where civilians would not have access to and denied urging Paul’s friends not to cooperate with investigators: “I never told anybody not to cooperate with law enforcement … at any point in time.”
He said he learned by the time his wife and son were killed that he was being investigated for his conduct at the hospital that night: “At some point in time I became aware of it … I know it was after that night and it was before June 7.”
Murdaugh’s decision to address the jury was only announced when the five-week trial resumed early Thursday.
“I am going to testify — I want to testify,” the disgraced legal scion told Judge Clifton Newman in a firm voice after putting his hand on a Bible and vowing to tell the truth.
The judge warned him that he risked “exposing himself to cross-examination” about the brutal murders as well as the roughly 100 other charges he faces, from stealing from clients to arranging his own shooting on the side of a highway.
Murdaugh faces 30 years to life if convicted of the murders, which he has always denied.
Even if he’s cleared, he is expected to spend decades in prison for those other crimes, some of which he has admitted.
The prosecution’s cross-examination is expected to continue when the trial resumes at 9:30 a.m. on Friday.
